Leave it to Beck, one of Coachella’s founding headliners, to put this desert festival experience back into perspective. And leave it to Arcade Fire (pictured above) to provide a much-needed voice of reason for a new generation whose musical passions have taken over the bigger-than-ever double-weekend event in Indio.

The past few years out here have seen a determined effort from organizers to make Day 3 into a last-chance party, fueled by either classic alt-rock (Red Hot Chili Peppers) or mega-popular hip-hop (Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Kanye West). But after the all-out bacchanal of Days 1 and 2 this time, capped by the return of OutKast and enormous crowds for Lorde and Pharrell Williams, a reckoning was in order, for as Coachella turns 15, it’s starting to become an unruly teenager that could do with some reining in and refocusing.

A petulant entity to begin with – what do you expect but impatience from patrons presented with nearly 180 acts in 72 hours? – its disrespect of elders whose contributions on and off the Empire Polo Field shaped the festival’s reputation has risen to intolerable levels, particularly among kids who wouldn’t know a great Replacements set from a lousy Julian Casablancas one. Obnoxious under-21s overheard while pushing their way to see Arcade Fire: “Ugh, that Beck guy was SO annoying!”

True, part of the point of being 15 is thumbing your nose at everything your parents like in the interest of establishing a new league of heroes. But the dividing line between then and now at Coachella couldn’t be more boldly drawn.

With the celebrity quotient at an all-time high – the parade of cameos continued Sunday with Mary J. Blige at the end of Disclosure’s set, Drake and Childish Gambino turning up in a tent with R&B vocalist Jhené Aiko, Slash joining Motörhead in Mojave, and Justin Bieber (that’s not a misprint) rhyming alongside Chance the Rapper – scoring a loose VIP wristband has become a strange priority. Wending one’s way backstage is, for some, a greater goal than witnessing amazing performances or assessing today’s burgeoning trends.

“We’ve been coming here for a lot of years,” noted Win Butler, sitting down at a piano to play “The Suburbs” with Arcade Fire, the trailblazing Montreal troupe whose set had its own star turn: Deborah Harry, escorted to the stage by beaming co-vocalist Régine Chassagne to sing Blondie’s disco classic “Heart of Glass” and, to a less assured degree, AF’s own “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).”

That group, in its fourth and best appearance in Indio since its startling breakout set of 2005, has seen this event morph from being one of the most vital bastions of independent music to becoming a heavily sponsored, too-cool bash oversaturated with poseurs and wannabes. “There’s a lot of fake VIP room (nonsense) happening at this festival,” Butler decried. “It super sucks in there, so don’t worry about it.”

Beck, taking a moment to reflect during his superb hour onstage, remembered when it began: “There were about 8,000 people out there,” he told his share of the nearly 100,000 circulating the grounds. “I remember walking out onto this massive field and being told, ‘This is where this is gonna be, and this is where that’s gonna be.’ ” Like many other figures at that time, he believed in the idea. “They said it was gonna be a show for bands to just come and do their thing.”

Fifteen years later, the ever-boyish Beck and the same aces who played the inaugural Coachella revisited the scene of one of their least memorable performances – and found redemption. Their set grabbed people from the get-go with crunchy takes on “Devil’s Haircut” and “Loser” and the funky rumble of “Black Tambourine” before segueing into a moodier midsection that shifted from “Think I’m in Love” (paired with Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”) and a remix of “Gamma Ray” into a few of Beck’s mellow Cali rock gems, the new “Blue Moon” and its sonic forebear, “The Golden Age.”

It was a glorious sampler, as sonorously rich as his brilliant new album – yet, when it started to run long, after Beck indulged an impromptu harmonica solo and holler through “One Foot in the Grave,” the sound was cut off. So the band simply played on, sliding through dance moves until they gave up, waved goodnight and shuffled off in a group huddle.

Arcade Fire’s lengthier performance was even more riveting and easily the best of the fest, trumping the sheer joy of Pharrell’s hit parade on Saturday. “We’ll bring it as much as you bring it,” Butler told the crowd at the outset between galvanizing takes on two tunes that made the group’s name here, “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” and “Rebellion (Lies).”

Every attack and respite within their 90 minutes seemed calculated for maximum impact: the swelling dance hurricane of “Reflektor” to open, fierce but nuanced renditions of “No Cars Go” and “Keep the Car Running” to bolster the middle, a rapturously tragic-romantic staging of the dramatic duet “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)” later on, with Chassagne atop a B-stage, a skeletal figure enveloping her threateningly.

They weren’t about to go gently into the good night, either, ultimately performing their stirring anthem “Wake Up” well after the PA had been shut off. First they wandered down into the pit in a processional with members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Then they wandered to the back of the stage, still chanting along with what few fans stuck around. It was a fitting, prayerful finish to what almost felt like a religious experience.

There were plenty of other notable moments throughout Day 3, from the supremely Prince-ly U.K. outfit Blood Orange and a robust revival of Neutral Milk Hotel just before sundown to sharp turns from the Naked and Famous and Frank Turner, plus a huge standout from newcomers Disclosure that should establish that duo as a leading light of the EDM scene for years to come.

But Arcade Fire transcended everything, including concerns over waning crowd size “in a field full of freaks and all my friends,” as Butler ad-libbed. That band was the one helping new and old Coachella generations alike take a long look in the mirror, reflecting on how this crazy scheme ever got to this point while searching for a way to move forward.

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